


this seems like a bad idea (I think I'll do it anyway)

by parsnips (trifles)



Category: Castle (TV) RPF, Firefly RPF, Glee RPF
Genre: Adulthood, Character Study, Closeted Character, M/M, Slow Build, Slow To Update, Work In Progress, lurking love interest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-08
Updated: 2013-11-08
Packaged: 2017-12-31 22:01:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 10,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1036870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trifles/pseuds/parsnips
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chris Colfer hits adulthood, and adulthood hits back. And makes out with him. And they both feel like crap about it, but for different reasons. 2011 was basically a shit year, when it wasn't being the most amazing one of Chris's life.</p><p>(Work in progress, and sloooow to update. Reader beware, dudes.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. That time Chris won a Golden Globe.

**Author's Note:**

> I literally started this in 2011, right after Chris won the Golden Globe, and I've been playing catch up with reality ever since. I was going to wait until it was done before I posted it, but, well-- reality is making narrative irrelevant, and I love too much of this to let it die in my gdocs.
> 
> To any real people who find this: This isn't you, isn't intended to be you, and I don't know shit about you. Most likely I made you up from a combination of people I know, some interview I read about you in EW, and whatever clever line I tried to shoehorn into the dialogue. 
> 
> Everybody else: Don't link this to real people, jfc. Not cool. Don't make it weird.

They're crashing parties, the whole crew, and Ashley and Kevin keep bringing him drinks and snatching them away again, laughing under the lights and rubbing the top of his award for luck each time. There's music, and Lea and Dianna are dancing, and this is the eighth drink they've done this with, and it doesn't matter if he hasn't finished a single one of them, he is kind of completely shitfaced.

It seems to make about as much sense as anything else tonight. Did he mention he _won?_ A _Golden Globe?_ He's not even sure he knows how to talk anymore, there's too much amazing in the air around him.

Ash swans back to him through the crowd, carrying something bright green in what looks to be a test tube, and tells him she's afraid to try it. He takes care of that for her, and it's _apples,_ oh my god, _deadly apples,_ and she takes it back before he can do much more than choke and wave it in her general direction. He sees her down it as she heads back to the bar, high-fiving Heather and hip-checking Darren on the way. 

That's pretty much how he spends the evening, until 3 AM rolls around and Lea's fumbling for the keys as everybody stands outside his apartment, apparently waiting for his couch and armchairs to welcome them with tender embraces. Whatever. His apartment, his furniture, and everyone else should just feel lucky he bought eggs a few days ago. And coffee. And toilet paper.

Single life is hard, and no one should pretend otherwise. 

It's when he's shucking himself out of his suit, still staring at the award cradled against his pillow, that he notices that his phone has a text. It's Cory, who was wise and valiant and went home like a sane person.

 _canucks unite: Nathan Fillion dm'd me and asked to send his congrats. woooo!!_  

The last thing Chris thinks before he crawls into bed and falls into a sleep that lasts a thousand years is, _But I'm not Canadian--_

 

* 

 

Usually, Chris is a terrible sleeper. Insomnia, screaming dreams, that time he bought the Marie Antoinette painting while apparently completely unconscious-- he's got the works. He's the last to go to sleep, and the earliest to wake up, and it's all very predictable and boring once you ignore the whole "sleep-shopping" thing, which is more disturbing than interesting anyway. 

Except not that night. And it's probably because of the adrenaline, but Chris likes to think it's a little bit because the award's real, and there, and bruising his face in a comfortingly material way. He falls asleep immediately, and when he wakes up the clock says 11 and someone is playing the guitar in his living room, snatches of tunes and idle chord changes. Chris flips a mental coin between Darren and Mark, and then clenches his eyes shut because ow, his brain is too hungover right now for these kinds of complex computations. It doesn't really matter -- someone's playing, which means someone else is listening, which probably means he's right back to being out of eggs.

Chris stumbles out of bed, throws on whatever clothes are on the floor nearby, and heads for the living room. The award he leaves on the pillow; it's probably not nice to actually carry it around with him everywhere. Probably. 

As it turns out, the person on the guitar (and on his kitchen counter): Darren. Person standing next to him, staring at the coffee machine: Mark. Persons on the couch, chair, and floor, watching clips of last night's show and poking dully at their eggs: Lea, Kevin, Amber.

"Jenna?" he asks the room at large. Lea groans. 

"Everybody else went home," Kevin says. "Except Ashley. Ashley's in the shower."

Chris wades into the thick of things and shoves Lea over. "Hey, winner," she says, relinquishing half the sofa to him, "how does it feel?" 

"Weird," he says, because it's true, it is weird. Wonderful, obviously, he's pretty sure it's wonderful, but-- He doesn't exactly remember what he said during his acceptance speech. He hopes it was good, because what he mostly felt was terrified out of his mind about going on stage and saying _things_ that would naturally show up minutes later on every news outlet--

"There you are," Amber calls out, and there's Chris on-screen, clutching his award like he's about to strangle it to death. Chris tries to listen, but Lea's tearing up again, and Kevin's saying something to Amber about Chris's shiny lapels, and Darren decides now is a great time to start playing something recognizable right at the edge of Chris's hearing. 

Mark stumbles up behind him and hands him a diet Coke. Chris decides that Mark is his favorite. "You did us proud," Mark says, clapping a hand on Chris's shoulder before heading into the bedroom to, Chris suspects, steal his bed and catch a nap before heading back to his place. Chris wonders if he should warn about the Globe lying in wait, except Lea is full-out crying again, and he doesn't have a chance.

When Cory shows up as part of the fashion sprawl on the TV, Chris remembers the text from the night before. "Hey," he says to the group, "Nathan Fillion says congrats?" 

"Like, Castle? Captain Hammer?" Kevin says, and Chris shrugs.

"I guess? He tweeted Cory about it, and Cory told me." 

Darren changes tunes abruptly. "Clearly, you should now be friends," he says, picking at the strings and pulling something faster than his usual riffs, more intricate. "Just remember, he likes being referred to as _Captain_. Captain Tightpants to his friends, of course, which you will now be."

Chris takes a long drink from his Coke and thinks about ignoring Darren, who is probably Up to No Good, among other capitalized words. Darren keeps playing that tune, though, and is so clearly waiting for someone to get the joke that it's almost painful. 

It's Amber who takes the bait. "Tightpants?" she asks, and that's it, Darren's swung off the counter and is crowding up in front of Chris faster than should be possible on a morning after that many parties.

"Chris," Darren says solemnly, "tell me you know whereof I speak." 

"Uh," Chris says.

"Oh my god," says Darren, "and you're the sci-fi geek. Tell me you have Netflix or something, anything, because we have got to _fix this_." 

Yes, Chris does, and after some bullying and promising to buy everyone lunch if they stay, Darren plugs Chris's laptop into the television and Darren's weird little tune is playing on Chris's speakers as the word _Firefly_ is burned across the screen.

Ash comes in just as Nathan Fillion sees the Alliance blow up Serenity Valley, towelling off her hair. "Captain Tightpants," she says approvingly; Darren kisses her.

 

*

 

Darren knows about _Firefly_ because, per him, everyone in the world should know about _Firefly_. It's also because he did a massive genre cramming session with every bit of space opera available when he was writing music for his Starkids project, and now he can quote R2D2's exact boo-be-boops and swear in Chinese. 

That's what he says anyway. He refuses to prove it. Chris calls shenanigans.

It takes a couple of weeks, catching episodes when they all can, but eventually the entire cast finishes the series. And yes, Darren was right, everyone should watch _Firefly_ , and there's an unfortunate period of time where Mark decides that Puck is clearly Jayne's great-great-great-grandfather, and therefore Puck should have a knitted hat with a pom-pom on it to wear at all times. And a gun named Vera. And Whedonesque dialogue. 

(Naya doesn't help when she actually _buys_ him the hat. Naya is not at all like her character except for the times when she is. She is a chaos factor of evil wrapped in a delightful personality.)

Before all that, though, Chris watches the first episode curled around Lea and Ashley, Amber and Kevin and Darren at his feet. Around the time Captain Reynolds is eating tomatoes with a pair of chopsticks, Chris texts Cory back. Something like "tell him thank you" and maybe some exclamation marks thrown in. Whatever. Busy now.


	2. That time Nathan Fillion infiltrated the Glee set.

They're doing rehearsals. Chris is back in McKinley, for the first episode after Kurt returns to the school. He's wearing something tight enough to clasp the backs of his thighs -- but that's his cue to stand up straight, curve his shoulders back a little. Chin up. Kurt, back at school, dressed for certain torment -- it's as familiar as his own skin. Skin that he'd taken off for a while and was now stretching back into again, for the first time in months. (Except the drunk episode. But the leather brace sort of threw him off, so his chin was all wrong. Came out okay on-screen, but _he_ knows it, and is still annoyed by it.)

The weird thing about coming back -- about leaving the Dalton set, the Dalton cast -- is that he's actually feeling a little torn up about it. When Ryan asks, he says it's because the bruises from crashing into lockers continuously had finally faded, but that's not really it. He doesn't know why he feels this way. It's... everything's just-- uncomfortable. Even with the right clothes on.

"Okay, Darren's going to come in from the right and pass you; we want three reaction shots at least," the floor director's telling him. "Time it with opening your locker. One over your shoulder, one from Darren's POV, one from Max's. Got it?"

"Got it," Chris says. The headcase thing he's doing can just take the backseat for a bit -- he can figure it out later. Or ignore it. Ignoring is cool, too. Right now he has to be surprised/lovestruck/nervous/the-bad-kind-of-startled-followed-by-the-good-kind-of-startled. (Sometimes, Chris wonders if that's just how he always looks. Sometimes, he makes faces in mirrors just to check. Sometimes, Ryan catches him at it and writes it into the show, because it's apparently hilarious, and Cory doesn't let it go for _weeks and weeks_.)

The clapperboard clacks down; action is called.

Kurt twists the dial on his locker, half-remembering the combination but letting muscle memory take over. He's not sure if he's grateful or depressed that he got the same locker again, that no one else took it over. Maybe grateful, he thinks. Maybe.

The lock hits that soft spot, right before the last number, that let's him know he can just pull now without finishing the combination. Yes. He's still got that, at least.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees someone walking in the hallway, coming closer, almost close enough to hit him if they keep walking that way-- but they're not wearing red, no letter jacket, so maybe the slushie won't come yet, maybe--

Kurt tugs at the locker just as he finally looks closer, and it's _Blaine_ , oh my god _Blaine_ is here--

The locker opens. And _a giant pinata's worth_ of candy, rubber snakes, and what looks like photographs comes ricocheting out and rains a shower of chocolatey death all over Chris.

"Cut!"

The floor director is shouting at someone, and one of the cameramen makes a joke about blooper reels, and Chris thinks maybe one of the candies -- they're all Hershey Kisses and Sugar Daddies, whatever the hell those are -- maybe one of them nicked his ear. There appears to be an expended trebuchet made out of PVC piping and heavy-duty rubberbands in the locker, still vibrating a little, and basically Chris figures that Cory is a dead man.

Apparently this wave of silent suspicion alerts Cory's spidey senses, and from across the soundstage Cory yells out "Not me," while simultaneously trying to mime something about a watch and possibly a train robbery. Chris isn't sure he believes him; Cory is a wily creature.

Darren wanders over, his most serious face plastered on really, really badly, and picks up one of the photographs that Chris still hasn't had a chance to look at. "I think," Darren says after several moments of deep contemplation, "that I may be partially to blame for this turn of events."

He flips the photo over. It's a publicity still. Of Nathan Fillion.

It's at about that time that Cory runs over, grinning hugely, and hands his phone over to Chris. It's showing Cory's Twitter feed.

 

_DM @frankenteen_

_Things might get explosive over in Glee-land. Have fun! FYI, don't be the one to open the principal's desk drawer._

 

"What," Chris says. In the distance, there is a small percussive explosion and what sounds, distantly, like sparklers. 

Darren says, "I may or may not have sent a fruit basket to Nathan Fillion's agent, care of _Glee_ , as thanks for his debonair portrayal of a charming and yet sorrowful space cowboy." Darren looks down at the still again. "I can neither confirm nor deny what else I may have written on the card. And signed with your name."

Chris's life. He does not understand it sometimes.

He was wrong to blame Cory, though. _Darren_ is the dead man.

Down the hall, a bucket of confetti flies across the tiles.

 

*

 

The scene ends up getting cut entirely. Which is mostly because Ryan says it doesn't go with the final tone of the episode, and only a tiny bit because Chris keeps having this half-second delay before he pulls open his locker, a half-second where he stops being Kurt and starts wondering if there's going to be an explosion.

Ryan says that's not it at all, but Chris knows when he's off. Maybe not how to _fix_ it, but he still _knows_.

 

*

 

They don't have the means to conduct a proper prank war, largely because none of them have access to Fillion's sets, and also, no one really has the time. But Chris does take the opportunity to buy one of those Twilight greeting cards that plays Edward and Bella's love theme when you open it. He pens a schmoopy poem, signs it with Darren's name, and sends it to Fillion's agent. Because that is what friends do.

He regrets it almost immediately. It's -- Chris and Darren are friends, and Darren can be the strangest combination of suave and fanboy, so it makes sense that Darren would send a fruit basket and Chris would try to mess with Darren's head. 

The disconnect comes with the "Chris actually writing to Nathan Fillion" part -- because it's weird to use a real person to get back at his castmate, like Nathan Fillion is some kind of random celebrity who's so far outside Chris's reality that writing to him might as well be like writing to Santa Claus. It's not like that at all. He's pretty sure they're on equal footing at least in the actor hierarchy, and they might even have been at the same parties. And not to be too weird about it, but he totally has a Golden Globe, and Nathan Fillion (though it's a complete crime) totally does not.

So what he's basically done is written what could be construed as a creepy note to a peer, the context of which said peer would be clueless about, and the result of which could be really, really embarrassing on, like, a _professional_ level.

The envelope is gone, though, taken by an assistant and put god knows where. Chris tries to put it out of his mind -- maybe Fillion's agent will throw it out instead of sending it on. Maybe he should call Fillion's agent to make sure.

Chris doesn't call. There's filming, and singing, and keeping his bachelor pad as cast-free as possible (crazy cast dance parties are what his trailer is for), and dream-shopping his way to ownership of the complete _Rick Steves' Europe_. And a week after the card could possibly have made its way to Nathan Fillion, he finally decides that maybe nothing bad is going to happen.

A week after _that_ , Fillion starts following Chris on Twitter.

Well, Chris and Darren. Which... is maybe better? And he was already following Cory, so maybe he's just gotten into the show. Coincidentally.

On the off chance that this isn't a terrible and embarrassing idea, Chris follows him back.

 

*

 

Later, "Born This Way" airs (minus the scene, and totally better without it). Shortly after that, so does an episode of _Castle_ filmed in L.A. Much becomes clear.

Chris has that _Castle_ playing on his laptop while he tries to figure out if microwaving a hot dog is less gross than boiling it. He's just concluded that they're equally gross and he should just order delivery again when his phone chimes.

It's a direct message. From Nathan Fillion.

 

_DM @chriscolfer_

_I did not know that "Fillion" could rhyme with "pillion." What's a pillion?_

 

On the computer, Castle and Beckett enter a lavish hotel room. In Chris's kitchen, he's dying of mortification.

Several plans flit through his mind, starting with ignoring it and ending with stuffing his phone in the microwave and hoping he doesn't burn the building down. In the end, what he does is call Ash to freak out quietly at her. She tells him to wear his browncoat with pride, which is an awful answer and she should be ashamed of herself. She laughs herself silly and then hangs up, and Chris now has about half a minute to do something before she starts texting everybody else and Cory (or Darren, who is somehow to blame for all this) starts talking to Fillion _for_ him.

She will say it was for his own good. Damn her wiles.

 

_DM @NathanFillion_

_Hi! A kind of cushion that goes behind a horse's saddle, for a second person._ Chris almost stops there, or adds an "IAMSOSORRY" hashtag, or anything to denote how incredibly embarrassed he is. Except somehow, what comes out instead is: _Darren dreams big._

He hits send, and then feels stupid again, and then feels extra stupid for getting all fanboy about this. This is not that big a deal. Talking to another actor -- over _Twitter_ \-- is really not that big a deal.

For a minute, that's it. And then there's a reply.

 

_DM @chriscolfer_

_Also: "dreamy" and "beamy"?_

 

Chris decides that overthinking this is a terrible idea, and also, he can avoid Fillion at parties for the foreseeable future.

 

_DM @NathanFillion_

_Pretty sure he was referring to your eyes, there. His feelings, they run deep._

 

*

 

There is, briefly, one upside to the exchange.

 

_DM @DarrenCriss_

_Hey, DC. Fillion really liked your poem._

 

It's a very brief upside.

 

_DM @chriscolfer_

_I'm so glad, 'cuz I worked really hard on that. Did I remember to quote Disney songs? "I'll Make a Man Out of You", etc._

 

_DM @DarrenCriss_

_Sometimes I hate your face._

 

_DM @chriscolfer_

_Mine is an evil laugh._


	3. That time Glee infiltrated the Castle set (sort of).

New York is blue. Grey-blue. The streets, anyway, in the shadows and between the buildings and looking up at the sky from the bottom of the Penn Station staircase. Los Angeles is yellow and made of angles, even though it's all highways and flat green spaces -- New York is blue and curved and somehow has arms to wrap around him, even though it's all pressed-together architecture and blocks that don't seem the right length. 

Chris is a little in love with New York.

There are times he wishes... maybe he could have gone a _slightly_ different route than he has with his life. Stayed on target just enough to have gotten out of Clovis, to have done something that gave him the freedom to do even more things, but without actually being... well, being in a television show. Or _this_ television show, anyway. Then he could be in New York and just _be_ in it, walk around with his backpack and eat where he wanted and actually take the subway and--

Sometimes, late at night when he can't sleep, he thinks about all the ways he could have done something _slightly_ different. Which choices could have to led to what, that kind of thing. It's a little like counting sheep, and a lot like what Lea calls "a bad idea."

"You can't think that making one little change here or there would allow you to be exactly who you are now, but doing something different," she says as they stand in costume on the street, coffees in hand and set photographers taking shots from a (not very) discreet distance. "The person who makes a decision to do one thing is fundamentally different from the person who makes a decision to do something else instead. You made the choices you did because you're you, and trying to figure out what your life would be like if you'd done something else is basically like trying to imagine being a completely different person. Which is fine for a day job, but not so great if it's keeping you up nights."

Manhattan smells like concrete and rubber and rain water, and his coffee is absolutely perfect. "You get weird when you're in costume," he says, and Lea shrugs.

"You stand up straighter. Everybody's got their methods."


	4. That time Chris finally met Captain Tightpants.

So it happens like this:

Chris is technically shilling the summer tour in the brief period between the end of filming and the beginning of said tour, but really, he's just wanted to be on the Late Late Show for a while. It looks like fun, and Craig would probably ask interesting questions, and Darren has been teaching Chris to play "Frere Jacques" on the harmonica, so he figures he's covered.

He's the first guest, but the second guest cancels the morning of and it's with some surprise that Chris walks into the green room to get a diet Coke and finds himself face to face with Alan Tudyk.

"You," he says, because this always happens.

"Me," Alan Tudyk agrees cautiously, and then offers Chris the green room as if it's his to give. "Welcome?"

"You _died_ ," Chris blurts out, and then doesn't improve the situation at all by following that with, "Oh my god, are you _okay?_ "

Somehow Alan Tudyk doesn't decide that Chris is an insane person. He gives an easy smile and says he's glad that people still care and then starts in on the usual questions two strangers in the same field end up asking one another when they're in the same place, to wit, what are you working on now, what do you wish you were working on, and thank god neither of us are working on that other thing over there, Jesus, that's a clusterfuck waiting to happen.

It takes less than a minute of this for Chris to get his head back together and remember that he's a professional and an adult, and by the time he's finished his Coke he's ready to ask if Alan had heard about Nathan Fillion's visit to the Glee set.

"Oh yes," Alan says, and there's something in his voice to suggest there's actually a really involved story coming up that Chris _really_ wants to hear, but then an assistant pops in and declares Chris is needed in makeup, and Alan waves him off as he pulls out a cellphone.

They don't really have a chance to hang together until they're both onstage and Chris has had a spirited discussion about kilts and related Scottish menswear with Craig. He moves one seat over and settles in to listen to Alan talk about the project he's working on now (and makes a mental note to tell everyone about _Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter_ , because anything with a title like that deserves all the publicity in the world), and so is a little unprepared for Alan to turn to him shortly after the intro and say, "I am so sorry for what I have wrought."

The audience laughs, and Chris does too, because that's what you do. He's not really _prepared_ for what happens next, though. He couldn't have _predicted_ Craig's robot sidekick turning its head and saying in a startlingly familiar voice, "Chris Colfer... you have some explaining to do."

After the exploding McKinley set, though, maybe he should have.

"Geoff, when did your voice get so manly?" Craig calls from his desk while Chris is busy dying by tiny, terrible degrees. And in front of a live studio audience, because naturally, what better way to do so.

The robot's mouth clicks open again. "Thank you, Craig, but I'm afraid I can't take all the credit. You see, I am merely a vessel. A cry from the wilderness... or from _space_."

Alan says, "I called him. That was my first mistake."

The robot's mouth is shut, but now the voice is coming from the wings -- out of view of the audience, but not from them. Definitely not from Chris. "It was some time ago that I became aware of the passion the Glee kids held for a little show Alan and I used to be on," the voice says. "I never thought it would blossom into the joyful war it has since become."

And then that's it. Nathan Fillion steps onto the stage. And even though they're not entirely sure what's going on, the audience goes wild.

 

*

 

There's a place in Chris's head where he's him, and he's experiencing life and he's trying not to say anything ridiculous and he wonders how he could stack the furniture in any given set so he could climb up to the catwalk and drop stuff onto the soundstage below.

There's the other place in Chris's head, though, where none of it is real. It's all just fiction. Raw story, and clever lines, and stage directions, and lighting notes. A translation of the real world, into something he can someday use. And maybe sometimes it's an escape, too. A lot of times.

This might be why he has so much trouble sleeping.

Sitting on the Late Late Show's stage, watching Nathan Fillion as he perches on Alan's armrest and tells an exaggerated story of his daring raid on the McKinley set, Chris realizes that he's in that space. He's writing all this down, little catches of dialogue and a record of mannerisms, because--

One time, Chris was asked during an interview what famous person he'd met who inspired him. And he couldn't answer it. Because the truth was that sometimes he _hated_ meeting the actors he'd stared at over the years, hated meeting them in real life and discovering they were assholes, or stupid, or just, just not _better_ than they really were.

Alan's all right. So's Craig, though he's putting on a show.

Nathan Fillion isn't even in the room.

Which isn't to say there isn't a guy who looks awfully like him sitting less than a yard away, gesturing and talking and making faces and glibly answering every comment thrown his way. But it's not real. Chris can tell it's not real -- he can tell when someone's thrown a mask up to the world, and it doesn't matter that it's a funny, charming, dashing sort of mask, it's still fake.

It grates, hearing this, seeing this. It's... disappointing. Like it always is.

But it is a spectacularly good mask, and Chris is taking as many notes as he can -- for himself, for his work, for whatever. Becoming Nathan Fillion's unintended audience is awkward enough that he wants to make it as worthwhile as he can, and so he smiles and nods and stays in his writing place until the end of the interview and he can escape back to his room. He stays until the assistants tell him that Alan and Fillion have left, and Chris takes a deep breath and comes back out of hiding.

Outside, as he's shuffled through security and to his car, he sees someone who looks like Fillion waiting on the sidewalk, and for a moment he thinks-- but it's not, it's actually some guy with a beard, and holy shit, drive, driver, _drive_.

 

*

 

_DM @chriscolfer nice meeting you at last!_

 

_DM @NathanFillion same!_


	5. That time Cory broke into Chris's hotel room for no good reason.

They're in Massachusetts. The tour is going really well, except for the random moments of assault by overeager fans and the ache in his muscles that will never, ever go away. It's the middle of the night, the AC is cranked up for all it's worth, and Chris is absolutely _miserable_.

If he had to call himself anything... he'd probably avoid the question. But he also has a practiced answer, because it would be stupid not to. Generally he settles on _actor_ , since _entertainer_ has weird overtones, and _performer_ doesn't cover everything, and _singer_ isn't even accurate.

He could go for _author_ , though. _Writer._ That seems right, or will, hopefully, someday.

Also really, really full of himself, oh my god. Which is why the answer is _actor_ and not this other thing, because at least that one's demonstrably true most of the time.

He spends a lot of time not-sleeping in front of his laptop, a Word doc open, typing up halves of scenes and quarters of dialogues and a sentence or two of description. Description is the worst -- he's a dialogue man. Snappy dialogue, stage directions, it's crystal clear that he should be concentrating on screenplays because that's where what little talent he has lies.

Two A.M. is a terrible time. It reminds him that he wants to be writing narrative fiction, and what he's staring at right now is, at its essential core, a pile of pointless garbage that means absolutely nothing. Why is he even awake? What is he possibly hoping to accomplish with this? He should go to bed, go to sleep, wake up, all the normal things before the show tomorrow night. He should basically be doing anything other than slumping next to his computer, staring out of his hotel room's windows into the black sky and city glow of Boston, wishing he could write anything real at all.

There's a book deal coming. And he can't fucking _write_. He puts his hands in his hair and his head on the table and wonders if this, of all things, could actually reduce him to tears.

His cell phone lights up, begins to vibrate gently next to his ear. Chris sighs, loud in the empty room. His skin kind of hurts around his eyes, and his forearms are weirdly stretchy, and there's an itch inside his brain -- all signs that he's hit the sweet spot of tiredness and creative urge and now, now's the moment he could start typing and not stop until he's got ten pages of something brilliant. Except that he's going to answer his phone instead, and that's going to be it for any writing he'd hoped to get done tonight.

If he'd turned off his phone in the first place, this stupid decision would have never come up.

Which might be why he hadn't.

Caller ID says it's Cory. Chris tries to make his voice sound sleepy, just woken up. "Hello?"

"Don't even try it," Cory says. "I can see your light on in the hall."

Chris looks over his shoulder at the looming door. "Creepy much?"

"Can't sleep," Cory says. "Very similar to creepy." A rapid knock comes at Chris's door, and Chris almost jumps. "I bet that was almost identical, though," Cory finishes, and Chris hopes that the look he gives Cory when he finally gets to the door expresses the full depth of his disapproval.

Cory may see it, but he's choosing to ignore it -- instead, he sweeps into Chris's room and crawls onto the second, unused bed, settling himself back against the headboard and looking at Chris expectantly.

Chris flops back down in the desk chair. They contemplate one another for a long moment.

Cory is kind of an enigma. Chris knows he's got some kind of Past -- he's cheerful and funny and tends to stand next to Chris for the express purpose of towering over him in an obnoxious manner, but there's the thing with the high school diploma that mysteriously appeared this spring, and the way Cory never goes to after-parties, and how every once in a while Cory says something just a little... off... about growing up.

Then again, what does Chris know -- Cory doesn't have the "flash of darkness across his visage" that is all Chris really knows about what someone with a Past is supposed to look like. Mostly he just looks a tired sort of happy, and a little younger than he's supposed to be.

Chris breaks first. "I'm working," he tries, and Cory nods slowly.

"I can see that."

Chris tries out to out-silence Cory again. It doesn't work. Cory has some kind of wild mountain Canadian power that allows him to just settle down and out-wait absolutely everything.

"It's a project," Chris says, tapping his laptop. He doesn't say more than that -- he doesn't really like talking about what he's doing until it's _done_. Something his publicist is getting steadily more annoyed about.

Cory doesn't push him about it, though. It's one of his best points, actually. Chris wonders how he learned it. "It's a project that has to be done at two in the morning?" Cory says instead, gesturing vaguely at the city lights outside, the dark Atlantic farther out.

It's difficult to explain. _Waiting doesn't help,_ he could say, or _If not this, then it'd have to be something else,_ or _I can't sleep, what else should I do?_

_Maybe this is the only time I have left to do it._

That last one is the closest to the truth, and it's the last thing he's actually going to say. Because... he just has this feeling that he can't shake that this is _it_. Chris has managed to hit some kind of magical lottery where people are paying attention to him, money for film projects appears out of thin air, he gets listed as one of Time's top 100 influential people for some _stupid_ reason, and now he has a book deal too -- and he can't waste this. He can't waste any of it. The show is a phenomenon, sure, but he's read St. Vincent Millay, he knows that something burning this bright can't last too long. And afterwards, he'll just be a kid with a high voice and some leftover fame unless he's made himself something else beforehand.

An actor, maybe, or, sure, a writer. An author. Something real, something that _he_ can control, and not this crazy bull-by-the-horns life he's lived for the past three years, waiting for the beast to throw him off and maybe trample his guts into the ground while it has him there.

The others... he doesn't know if the others feel that way. He's not sure he wants to know. If he found out, he'd either think they were crazy for doing nothing, or he was crazy for investing that much worry into the future. In either case, someone's crazy and has been wasting their time, and he'd rather live in blissful ignorance for a little while longer.

Chris shuts his laptop and rubs his face. "I couldn't sleep," he finally says, and doesn't go further with it.

Cory shrugs. "Bet sitting up in front of the computer isn't helping," he says, and then hops back off the bed and heads for the door.

Chris watches him warily. "And now you leave again, after Zen-like statements?" he calls, and Cory, the Zen master, flips him off and heads out, tossing a "good night" behind him like the entire encounter was completely normal.

The door clicks shut, and for a moment Chris thinks about reopening his document and starting back up. The moment's gone, though, the flicker-edge of adrenaline finally wearing out and leaving him exhausted. Maybe, when he turns off the lights, he'll actually go right to sleep. Maybe he won't stare, awake, at the ceiling, counting off seconds of wasted time. Maybe.

He does go to bed. And sleep, of a sort, does come.


	6. That time Darren kissed Chris because it was hilarious.

On the last night of the tour, Darren kisses Chris during the big Klaine skit. Chris tries hard as hell not to fall over backwards or, like, brain Darren with his mic. His voice goes sky-high too, dammit, when he tries to give the next line, and Darren looks entirely too smug about the entire thing.

Afterward, in the green room, Ash pats his knee and tells him the whole sordid plan, and also how she was a willing accomplice. He shuns her conciliatory patting and sulks in the corner with a Diet Coke and a glare for the rest of the evening.

Riker, from the Dalton gang, tweets him DM after DM of tumblr clips and gifs of the kiss for the next week, and only after Darren apologizes with a pack of Firefly trading cards that he'd snagged off eBay does Chris consent to share the funnier ones with him.


	7. That time Comic-Con became the "convention under the sea."

Chris can't remember the last time he could actually _relax_.

The tour is over. Now there's a press thing at Comic-Con, and then, like, a week after that he's filming his movie (oh god, _his movie_ ), and then he's right back on set, back in the show for as long as Ryan Murphy decides to keep him. 

(And that's a sore point he's not thinking about right now, except with a tiny voice all the way in the back of his head that says, _I knew it._ )

He's got too much to do to actually enjoy the con, and even if he didn't... well. While he has a chance of escaping unnoticed in this particular crowd, there's the off chance that he'll be recognized, and he doesn't want to really put the effort into disguising himself with Jedi mindtricks and sunglasses. And even if he did, there's still a chance that he'd get cornered by fans who haven't noticed that he's passed the zenith of his popularity.

So he stays in his room when he's not expected to be doing interviews and signings, and waits for Sunday's panel. Every once in a while he'll get a text from one of the gang to meet in such and such hotel room -- while he's been legitimately working most of the times they've paged him, it's not with a little guilt that he reads Ash's latest to him:

 

_you ok, boo?_

 

He shuts his laptop at that -- script changes now, he's had to put the book aside until the movie's done -- and puts on the sunglasses and shakes his shoulders out, getting ready to head for the emergency stairwell at the end of the hall. It's the only way to get around hotels where there could be lurking lurkers in every elevator. He's pretty sure this hotel is mostly for actors and their ilk, anyway, but news gets around.

Travel by stairwell is just one of the many new and exciting things he has to do in hotels now, but it's almost the most interesting from an artistic point of view. The lighting is always a strange, filtered yellow, eliminating shadows but outlining everything with thicker lines and flatter colors. Sometimes the stairs are carpeted, incongruous against painted cinderblock walls, but sometimes they're just more cinderblock, rubber treads wedged on. They smell like vanished cleaning fluids and stale air and cigarette smoke that shouldn't legally be indoors -- sometimes a little like cement, and sometimes, depending on the parties, there's a heavy tang of alcohol on every landing with a door.

Chris choreographs fight scenes in his mind, swinging legs and tumbling bodies -- he tests dialogue for would-be lovers catching one another on the stairs. Great spaces for setting a scene, and he loves them just for that -- but like any place that can't keep itself firmly trenched in reality, he's always a bit more comfortable after he's left them.

He slips through the door and starts heading up -- Ash and Lea and Heather, at a minimum, are holding court about three floors up, and there are probably others who'll be passing through as the evening wears on.

Sound doesn't echo in these stairwells -- this is one of the carpeted kind. Everything is muffled, and pressing in. This is probably why he doesn't hear someone coming down the stairs toward him. There's no warning at all, really, except the _sight_ of someone who looks a lot like Nathan Fillion dropping a step at a time into view, both of them moving until it's them and a half landing and the awkwardest conversation ever.

Fillion blinks at him at first, not recognizing. Which is fine, and very convenient even if it is a little embarrassing. (Chris refuses to think it's _insulting_ , even though it kind of _is_ , because Chris is not going to be that random asshole who thinks everybody should know who he is. Even though Fillion fucking should after that shit he pulled when they met.) Chris gives a half smile and keeps walking and it's more than a little surprising when Fillion half-stretches out a hand and says, "Oh, hey, you're staying here?"

Chris stops and lifts his sunglasses and because his mother did not raise an impolite son actually answers back. "Yeah," he says, and then waves vaguely around. "Though not _here_ here, obviously. Since that would be creepy. And probably be in violation of the fire code or something."

"Probably," Fillion quietly agrees, and... and it's just all weird, that this is happening, that this conversation is going on. But he's not leaving, and Chris can't manage to make himself move on either. Fillion's taller than him, shorter than Cory. And... odd to look at. Older, definitely, and broad shouldered and square jawed and just plain bigger than Chris, somehow -- but. There's just something. Like when Chris can't get into character quite right, and all his skin feels out of place. That's how Fillion looks when he doesn't have his show face on.

Which is probably the difference Chris is seeing now. Fillion, for the moment, isn't on. And he looks a little lost without it. It makes Chris wonder what _he_ looks like.

Chris gestures upwards. "I'm heading to 995. Password is 'I'm Nathan Fillion and Chris told me the room number' if you're interested in meeting any of the others."

"Thanks," Fillion says, shrugging into his coat a bit, or maybe into his shoulders. "It'd be an experience, I'm sure."

Chris smiles politely and hits the stairs again, saying good night and wishing a pleasant evening and looking forward to seeing him later if they happen to catch one another and every other platitude that can ever be used when speaking with a work colleague whom one barely knows.

He sees Fillion wave and head away, but can't, of course, hear the footsteps at all.

 

*

 

Fillion does not, in fact, show up to meet anybody. Which is probably for the best, considering the total interrogation Chris went through after the girls found out that he's seen Fillion again, and invited him to come by, and that Chris thought he was broad shouldered. Which he _is_ , and Chris _does_ , but that doesn't mean _anything_.

There's a very, very big difference between lusting after a character and finding some upsides to someone you're not even sure you _like_.

Which, if _Glee_ 's taught them anything at all by now, it should be this.

 

*

 

Something dire happens at around one A.M.

Namely, the entire hotel floods.

The longer version of the story, which Darren is tweeting and Naya is shouting into the phone at Mark, is that there was a party on the fourteenth floor, and at that party (the guests of which _no one_ is willing to name and it's driving them all to _distraction_ ) someone decided it'd be a great idea to hang something heavy from one of the sprinkler heads in the hotel room. Which is like the one piece of weird information Chris has saved from his two weeks at college -- he remembers the tiny stickers and the firm admonishments that went right along with the "don't burn your microwave popcorn" and "save all your quarters": "don't ever hang anything from the sprinkler heads, because it will be bad."

The sprinkler, unsurprisingly, broke from the weight of whatever (or _whoever_ , and speculation is running _rampant_ ), and proceeded to set off the entire system, dumping thousands of gallons of water into the room. Which, as water is wont to do, promptly leaked, spread, dropped, and shimmied its way through multiple floors, destroying a ton of property and setting off the fire alarms just for the hell of it.

Which means everyone in the hotel is currently milling around the parking lot at a stupid hour of the night, waiting for the fire trucks and hoping TMZ doesn't show up just to make an already bad night worse.

Chris and Ash are sitting on the hood of a Jeep. Chris doesn't know whose Jeep it is -- it's just in the right spot for catching glimpses of husky firemen (Ash's idea) and their ability to shut down the alarm bells and let everybody back in to check the damage (Chris's idea, and he's very, very glad he'd gone back to his room before the disaster hit, because while he's done the diligent thing and emailed copies of his manuscript and scripts to his manager after every save, he _likes_ his laptop, and he's _glad_ it's not water-logged and dead).

While the crowd was initially large and a bit like a fan magazine's wet dream, cars have been steadily pulling up and taking people away from the public eye for the last forty-five minutes. It's not actually surprising when Chris gets a call on his cell from Lea, and she's telling him to gather the crew because they're going to find out how many people they can stuff into Mark's rental car. "He's taking us away from all this," she shouts into the phone, presumably because Mark is driving with the windows down and the music up, with no respect for the hour or common human decency.

When Chris tells Ash, she whoops and hops off the car to find Harry and Darren, leaving Chris on the car, wondering just how obvious the Glee exodus is going to be in five minutes' time. The air is crisp, California cool, and the sky glow is sodium yellow. Chris carefully pulls his legs out of the now-automatic Kurt crossed-legs pose and sits with his arms resting on bent knees, feet spread on the Jeep's bumper, settling into the position and trying to get back the body memory of this being natural to him.

His laptop bag has a Millennium Falcon sticker on it. Less than ten feet away, Joel McHale is talking to someone who looks an awful lot like Elijah Wood. Naya and Cory are over by the hotel doors, laughing about something and sharing a bottle of water back and forth. Chris feels weird, and not weird, that his jeans aren't clasping the backs of his thighs.

He is really, really tired.

Ash doesn't come back, but Darren emerges from the crowd and hops up next to him. His hair is a curly wreck, and he has the slightly manic "awake" look he gets a little too often to be healthy. "I think I just met Viggo Mortensen," Darren says without preamble. He's jiggling his knee and making the car sway just slightly because of it. "He invited me to paint elephants with him."

Chris looks at him with a certain amount of fondness, tempered with a huge amount of, at this point, habitual annoyance. Darren's jiggly knee is rocking the car just enough to make Chris feel a little sick, and he's a second away from saying something cutting when Darren drops his head into his hands, fingers raking through his hair, and half laughs. "What am I doing here," he mutters. His hands fall, he doesn't look up, and Chris suddenly remembers why he stopped being angry at Darren for not being better than he was.

A couple of years back, he'd watched Darren Criss play a boy-wizard on about a million YouTube videos with garbage sound. He'd been impressed that someone had actually made a musical version, and, yeah, thought the guy who played Harry was funny and kind of hot. (Chris blames this on the fact that he gets crushes on fictional people. Which is fine when they're book characters, more problematic when they're played by actors who Chris might, theoretically, have to make out with on camera some day.)

And then he'd found out that Darren was going to play the mysterious maybe-love-interest for Kurt, and he'd had the thought that maybe this time he wasn't going to be disappointed by meeting someone he admired -- maybe this time he could just _like_ them. It was a hopeful wish that stayed with him right up until he actually met Darren, and within about five minutes wanted to break his face. Or avoid him forever. One of the two.

Darren smiled a lot, and bounced around, and looked ridiculous when he meant to look earnest, and had a guitar that he took out and played at weird moments because he was good at it and wanted other people to like him for it. He was charming as hell, and Chris consequently resented the hell out of being charmed against his will. Which meant that Chris spent a lot of time being Darren's coworker, and avoided as much as possible actually _talking_ to him.

It had all come to a head after they'd filmed the Christmas episode. Hours of choreographing dance steps around the Dalton common room, one take too flirty, one take not flirty enough, more than a few takes completely out of sync with what they'd already recorded -- and the night was edging on, the lights getting weird along the outside of Chris's vision, the sound of shoes on floorboards touching Chris's ears and made him want to scratch at them. This was what it meant to be tired. Being awake in bed and staring into the dark beside the pillow was just insomnia. Murphy had edged them out into the realm of psychosis.

It was Darren's first really long shoot and, to his credit, he worked it like a trouper. No complaints, no yawns, no screwing up the takes on purpose (because lord knew they were doing it enough on their own without helping it along) -- just constant work. When they finally wrapped, Chris had collapsed against the Dalton couch and considered burrowing in for the evening. With the encouragement of the stage director telling him to leave before she carried him out bodily, he'd limped over to the dressing room. Darren had beaten him to it, and wonder of wonders, he had his damn guitar out again.

"Not really feeling it," Chris said, instead of the more honest _I will end you_.

"Sorry," Darren muttered. Which drew Chris's attention more than any musical ploy would have, anyway. Darren's head was still bent over the guitar, looking away from him, as he tried to tune it with sleep-numb fingers. "I just have to-- I've got to get this song--"

Chris didn't roll his eyes, but it was a near thing. "I guess when the muse hits you," he said, and there didn't seem to be a way, at two in the morning at the end of a ridiculously long shoot, to make that sound anything other than judgmental.

Darren glanced up quickly from under his brows -- not frowning, but not _fake_ , either. "It's for the show, the one I'm writing. I've got to get this down, they're waiting for it."

It was the Starkid project, the one Chris would've been a lot more excited about before he actually met Darren. "So?" he'd said. "You've been kind of busy."

Darren strummed, the chords jangling, still off. He went back to tuning, letting out a low breath that wasn't quite a huff. "So've they. And I said I would do this. And they need it. And I want to do it. So... yeah."

Chris sat in front of the mirror and started scraping away the stage makeup. He didn't say anything else -- if Darren felt like he needed to do things for his old friends in order to _keep_ them as friends, then whatever, it was his life.

And maybe that would have been it, except Darren strummed again, the notes all coming out right this time, and he said lowly, "I can't be that guy who gets a gig and drops my friends. It just... it could have gone so, so many ways. I need to not be an asshole. I joked about being one, if... so I can't. I can't be that guy."

Chris had never made that kind of joke to anyone. There hadn't really been anyone to make that joke with. High school hadn't exactly been flush with people that he-- that needed to be _kept_. That needed to remember him as he was, and not as he is now. Frankly, while he didn't think he'd changed that much, he didn't necessarily want people remembering him as he was. Tampons stuck on his back in home room -- not really a great memory that he wanted to share with the shitheads of his past.

But Darren had had friends. He'd probably always had friends, because that's the kind of person he was, easy to like and happy to like people back again. If he wanted to be a dick and drop everyone from his past, he probably could -- he'd always make more friends. He wasn't like Chris -- he didn't have to work to make friends, didn't have to work to keep the friends worth having, didn't have to worry about what would happen if his friends realized that, deep down, he wasn't worth being friends with in the first place...

Darren didn't have to worry about any of that. So maybe the fact that he did... said more about him than any damn guitar could.

Chris hung up up his jacket, and picked up his duffel. He looked over at Darren. "Can I get you anything?" he asked, because maybe he needed to not be an asshole too.

Darren smiled a little. It was still annoying. But--

"Thanks, man," he said. "Rain check?" 

Chris had shrugged, and headed home, and stopped hating Darren quite so much.

And now he's in the parking lot of a drowning hotel, Darren freaking out next to him because of some kind of reminder of his sudden weird fame, and all he can think to do is sort of pat him on the shoulder and say, "There, there."

Darren throws his hands in the air and abruptly says, "I spoke with motherfucking Aragorn-son-of-Arathorn, king of men. He invited me to _make art_. How can this work? How is this life? What the _fuck_ , man, I need to call my _mom_ , nothing makes _sense_."

Which is about when Mark's rental comes pushing its way through the crowd. And he does have the windows down, and the music really is ridiculously loud. It's Queen, because Mark has a sense of humor, and it's "Princes of the Universe," because Mark's sense of humor at three in the morning can be a bit terrifying -- and then he honks the horn because he basically wants everyone in the world to hate him.

Lea leans disastrously far out of the passenger side window of Mark's SUV and yells, "Does anybody remember laughter?" because she's Lea, and she should never be allowed near Fairuza Balk's filmography ever again. It works, though -- Naya and Cory, Heather and Kevin, Ashley and Amber and Jenna and Harry and Dianna, they all make their way over, laughing like hyenas and possibly still tipsy from the evening's various parties. Darren's hands drop, and he pushes off the Jeep before grabbing Chris's wrist and dragging him down as well, all previous soul-crushing self-realizations apparently forgotten. Chris considers making a joke about bathos and taking his wrist away, but he's tired, and no one would hear it anyway, and he's getting distracted by the grim realization that he might very well end up on someone's lap. Again.

He manages to escape the fate by pushing himself into the back seat and claiming a spot while the rest of them are still trying to figure out if they'll all fit. Which they will, somehow. Queen is finishing up, and now it's dance pop from the '90s blaring right behind Chris's ear, all _what is love_ and _rhythm is a dancer_ and Mark is grooving as if proving that he's a thirty-year-old guy playing a seventeen-year-old is the world's best joke. Which it kind of is, to be fair. Ashley climbs in next, claiming the spot beside him, and Cory follows, and then it's just a matter of sardining everyone inside.

What this means is that, somehow, Darren is the last to get in. So it's probably Darren's fault, somehow, when _Nathan fucking Fillion_ appears out of the dwindling crowds and sticks his head through the open side door.

"Hi," Nathan _stalker_ Fillion says, and smiles gamely around. "Are you guys heading to another hotel? Has the con set something up, or...?"

Darren, that traitor, grins. "No, no, we're just, I mean, Mark's rescuing us, so. No clue if the con's coming through, sorry about that."

Nathan Fillion glances around the dark car, and Chris swears that for a second he's looking right at him, pausing right on his face. Well, they've met twice now, maybe he finally recognizes Chris. (And oh, that's uncalled for, he knows it's uncalled for, and that's why having an actual filter between his brain and mouth is wonderful.) Nathan Fillion says, "No worries, thanks for the heads up. I'll just..." He waves behind him, indicating some vague middle-distance space in the parking lot, and then turns the gesture into a brief salute.

"You could come with us."

Which is how Chris discovers that his filter apparently doesn't exist in front of Nathan _I salute like a space cowboy_ Fillion, and also that maybe Darren isn't entirely to blame for Chris's current misfortunes. 

Mark immediately seconds the offer, thank god, and the others join in, and somehow, even though it shouldn't at all work, Nathan Fillion is getting into the car. Darren has to sit on Harry's lap, but Nathan Fillion is sitting in the seat in front of Chris, and Chris doesn't know what to do with all the tiny nuggets of information he's being bombarded with.

Things like how Nathan Fillion's hair smells like regular shampoo, and his neck smells a little like Old Spice of all things, and his clothes fit his body better than his skin does. Like how Chris can really tell how much wider Nathan Fillion's shoulders are compared to his, and his voice carries well even over the general hubbub in the car, and Ash is contemplating poking Nathan Fillion in the ear to see what he does. (Chris captures her hand before she actually makes contact, and she decides to take this as a sign that she should tickle Chris. Which ends up with the embarrassing moment when Chris's knee hits the back of Nathan Fillion's seat and Nathan Fillion looks over his shoulder and the light from the passing streetlamps reflects in his eyes like something very, very pretty and Chris is very, very tired.)

Sir Mix-a-Lot comes on over the stereo, and everyone agrees that baby's definitely got back.

Mark's got a house he bought about a year ago, in the middle of the woods where he can retreat and relax and quietly make birdfeeders for the apparently millions of amazing birds that live in his backyard, gathering around him like the world's most mohawked Snow White. It's about an hour and a half out, which means that it's actually the most inconvenient thing ever, but it's better than hanging around in the hotel parking lot, and it's a lot better than Chris being by himself somewhere, in a room in some random hotel, thinking about working and not actually doing it.

Jenna commandeers the iPod and finds some indie folk hiding in the depths of Mark's playlists. It's not party music, and it's not incredibly loud, and the last thing Chris sees before he nods off on Ash's shoulder is Mark drinking from an enormous cup of coffee and Nathan Fillion's arm stretched over the back of the middle row, a big hand lightly grasping the seat.

 

*

 

They make it to Mark's around 4 AM, and it's just fortunate that they're all used to sleeping in ridiculous places, because Mark basically just points at the rooms that might have sleeping surfaces and lets them sort themselves out. The whole place is like a decrepit hunting lodge, or maybe one of those horror movie murder locations that seem too campy to be true.

Chris ends up curled on a bed with Naya and Harry, neither of whom snore but Chris thinks might both be secret cuddlers. There's a painting of a moose wallowing in marsh hanging on the opposite wall, which is so incredibly cheesy that Mark must have actually bought it for the place. He doesn't know where anybody else ended up, and he's not sure he cares. The lights go out, Harry squirms against his back, and Chris can feel exhausted sleep coming for him.

He wonders if Nathan Fillion got the couch.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's what I've got. But I know where it's going, and I'm going to finish this, bros. It's just... gonna take a while. Thanks for reading what's here.


End file.
